The heart of a poem
by Zauberer S
Summary: A very young Faramir travels with the Rangers (Warning: SLASH)


TITLE: The heart of a poem.  
  
AUTHOR: Zauberer S.  
  
EMAIL: zaubererslyth@yahoo.es  
  
FEEDBACK: I´d beg for it.  
  
RATING: PG  
  
PAIRING: very mild Faramir/Boromir, Aragorn/Faramir and Aragorn/?  
  
DISCLAIMER: Not mine, Faramir and Boromir belong to each other and Aragorn... Just kidding. Property of J.R.R. Tolkien and New Line.  
  
SUMMARY: A young Faramir travels with the rangers.  
  
A/N: Aragorn thinks he´s T.S. Eliot, Faramir is too young to tell him he´s not, the author thinks she can write in a language she doesn´t master. And this insanity is dedicated to anyone who writes Faramir/Boromir stories, specially to Deanna.  
  
...  
  
THE HEART OF A POEM  
  
...  
  
*Embrace the darkness cause it may held you  
  
When you have nowhere to go  
  
And the wind comes South  
  
As your sighs linger yet below.*  
  
Faramir read, translating from a recent volume which would have spent the rest of its days inhabitated by dust and solitude were it not for the caring hand of the boy. Faramir thought elven poetry beautiful but sad, like an unclouded morning of wedding, when the bride rises from the bed of her beloved to marry someone who isn´t her beloved.  
  
Faramir discovered that he preferred sad words, bitter tears to sweet ones. He shifted in his bed, knowing that he should not be up so late.  
  
But he was not at home, where the threat of his father lecturing him about the importance of a good sleep over and over. So he didn´t blow the candle.  
  
No, he wasn´t at home where the promise of clinging to his brother´s bed was sometimes stronger than the will to keep on reading. He would make no sound, barefoot through the corridor, when he fled to Boromir´s chamber in the middle of the night. The book would lay open on his own bed til next morning.  
  
Now he was in the wilderness, resting on the ground, a humble tent his only shelter. He liked it. It was different, the dampness of the air, the cold, the hard floor under him and, above all, the lively silence. A million different things seemed to be about to happen, and Faramir realized that life was new and he was indeed young, too young not to be thrilled by this journey.  
  
If his father wanted him to learn the ways of the wild men, to hunt and suffer hunger, to walk until he couldn´t feel his feet, then he was going to enjoy it. That would be his revenge. He was going to be so alike these Rangers as he could, just one of these men his father distrusted and feared so much as to send his son to be taught by them.  
  
Faramir wondered if he was suppossed to spy on them, as well. But he couldn´t care less. He couldn´t care about anything at all now, not until home was within sight again and the weight he allowed himself to drop when he left Minas Tirith was on his back again.  
  
Nightmares may wait tangled in the palace sheets, cares and caresses would still be there when he returned, patient like white stone. What was his father doing these days, now he hadn´t anyone to blame? Denethor didn´t suspect how much an amateur he was, for Faramir blamed himself much more, his father´s acusations innocent compared to his own.  
  
*Come another night I´d touch you  
  
Quietly, as touching a god.  
  
Tonight this fire burns for us both  
  
And my body will be ashes before dawn.*  
  
He waited a bit before returning to the book. It was upsetting, such sadness contained between words some elf once sung. If he could only be a poet maybe he could lighten his heart, grieveing the hearts of the ones who listened to his songs.  
  
But he was no poet. He was just a child lost between silent men, all grown up and serious as black marble. Faramir was glad to be away, but felt his own insignificance surrounded by tall trees, so tall and thick that they could turn day into night.  
  
There was soft noise outside and Faramir drew his hands to his sword.  
  
"Do not fear me" a voice said, commanding but kind. "I´ve come to do you no harm".  
  
A big figure entered from outside the tent, and it was a Ranger, in the truest sense of the word. He was tall, and dirty though dignified, rugged hair and dry mud all over him, a smile on his lips and darkened green eyes. Faramir feared the intensity of his gaze, scared at his own fascination, because this was no mere Ranger, he could tell, but the one who would stand up for the rest of them, the rest who ever paled at the comparison.  
  
"I´ve arrived this very evening" the Ranger spoke and his voice was alien, none of the languages of Middle Earth fitted properly "but I know of your stay, Faramir son of Denethor. Yours was the only light still burning so I came to greet you, for I am the Captain of this Rangers".  
  
The man sat beside Faramir, too casually, and Faramir wondered if he had encouraged it with a brief tilting of his head, which he couldn´t help.  
  
"Oh, thank you".  
  
Faramir felt tiny and awnkward, and a bit cold in only an old shirt he wore to sleep. The tender light of the candle make out the features of the Ranger like a lover runs his fingers along the curve of his lover´s back.  
  
He was reminded of a rainy night, when his brother came home all wet and chilled, and he warmed his hands by the fireplace in Faramir´s room. He couldn´t - didn´t want - stop looking at those hands, the face tenderized by the timid light, the rest in darkness. Faramir drank in that beauty as he would drank kisses later, just a little fire and his own desire to guide him.  
  
He knew he had to stop thinking about those thing, now, here of all places.  
  
"You know my name, Captain, but I am yet to hear yours".  
  
The man looked him in awe, amused at his insolence and not a bit angry. His smiled was warm and frank, but a bit sad, not unlike eleven poems.  
  
"I go by many names, child, but you may call me Aragorn, for I am the son of Arathorn. I am Dunedan to many and Estel to the elves".  
  
Realization took a moment to sink in, a moment of silence in which Faramir could feel his breathing searching for an answer. The other simply stared at them, waiting for him to choose the name he thought most of.  
  
"Estel? Then..." his voice faltered "then you wrote some of this".  
  
He showed him the book, sticiking his hand out of the sheets, like a little baby who´s just found a treasure buried in the sand. Faramir almost heard himself giggling at the discovery.  
  
The Ranger took the book in his hands, barely brushing fingers with the boy, but enough to make Faramir oddly uneasy.  
  
Every word the man had written, every word he had read tasted bittersweet in his mouth, tempting him even more, willing him to get closer.  
  
"You are too young to understand most of this".  
  
He swung the volume in the air, exposing it as if it was evidence of a crime. Faramir beamed with pride. The man regarded him with newly found respect.  
  
"I see that Gondor teaches his sons well".  
  
But Faramir shook his head, suddenly saddened with thoughts of home, grave as hard stone against the soft light.  
  
"No, it doesn´t. I had to learn myself".  
  
There was more, much more underneath this words, but the man didn´t mean to pry. He just tasted tho boy´s voice, so brave and so full of things that should have been but never were.  
  
Faramir imagined he could sink in the sea of calm that was the Ranger, standing there, smiling still, wisdom sparkling in the silence more than in speak. He returned the book to the boy with a bow.  
  
"These, Captain," Faramir run his fingers over the book´s cover, as if it were the smooth skin of a lover "are very beautiful".  
  
"Thank you. I didn´t know they had a copy in Minas Tirith".  
  
Faramir pressed his knees to his chest, restless butnot wanting to reveal more of his pale, freckled skin.  
  
"It was hidden below layers of dust. It did not deserve that fate".  
  
He could see unexpected shyness washing over the Ranger, in the brink of blushing. Faramir laught softly at this.  
  
"Thank you, Faramir. The ones in that book, I wrote them when I was oddly idle, and I felt younger than I really was".  
  
The boy didn´t notice the cold anyomre. The Ranger spoke with a sweet voice, as if matching the tenderness of his eyes. Faramir moved closer to him and swam in his warmth.  
  
"The whole book is sad," continued Faramir, thinking out loud "but your poems are somehow the sadest, you can sense an unspeakable loss in them, as if summer was coming to an end, and the fruit sweetened and you knew life was going to get worse from then on".  
  
He had a strange gleam in his eyes, of unspent tears, too much a solemn glance for a child this young, this small and thin. He looked down at the book because he was couldn´t look up at the man.  
  
"Child, you do think a lot".  
  
The Ranger called him `child´ because he knew Faramir never got to be that.  
  
His fingers reached for Faramir´s chin, making him look, look up at him and look him in the eye. The touch wakes something inside Faramir, and he´s no longer afraid, but the longing carved its name under his skin and he was horribly sure which name would it be.  
  
"I know the feeling, Captain" He´s a bit broken, thinking about home, about his father, about his brother, about a white cold castle. "Of knowing that the only thing you want more than anything else is the one thing you can´t have, you can´t touch".  
  
The Ranger was reminded why he wrote the silly poems in the first place. It takes a broken heart to know another, and he could gladly sink in the boy´s beautiful blue eyes, for there be the same darkness, and beasts and thunder and lighting that he hid very far behind his own eyes.  
  
But the boy kept talking, deepening the pain.  
  
"I was wondering... there´s one poem, the one in which a man and an elf go hunting and nothing happens but it could have happened..."  
  
"It could have happened" the man repeated like a psalm, lost in his own thoughts.  
  
And Faramir knew his question had been answered.  
  
Estel was the man in that poem, discovering the cruelty of hope, as Faramir had not long ago, so when he found the book he felt painfully mirrowed in its verses.  
  
There was joy in the poems, too, but it was cheapened by the knowledge of what lies ahead, loneliness and the memory of a single touch, the touch that could have set afire his whole world, the touch that burned the Ranger to dust because loves dies much later than hope. The same touch that pierced Faramir´s soul, when the world was mute and in the pitch black night you couldn´t see the resemblance between siblings.  
  
"It could have happened".  
  
Faramir never knew which of them uttered these words, or maybe both. The rest of the night they spend without talking, til the raising of the winter sun. They silently reached for someone. In darkness Faramir wanted nothing more than reach for his brother, as the Ranger would reach for his elf.  
  
But it was just poetry, dead ink, and it could never happen, even though it could have happened. 


End file.
